Gordon Tullock is University Professor of Law and Economics and Distinguished Research Fellow in the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He holds a joint appointment between George Mason University Law School and the Department of Economics. Professor Tullock received a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1947. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Chicago in 1992. Following periods of employment as an attorney at law and in the U.S. Department of State, Professor Tullock taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, George Mason University and the University of Arizona. In 1966, Professor Tullock became the Founding Editor of the Journal of Non-Market Decision Making (later renamed Public Choice). He remained Senior Editor of Public Choice until May 1990. In 1968 (together with Charles Goetz) he established the Center for Studies in Public Choice (renamed the Center for Study of Public Choice in 1969 when James Buchanan joined Virginia Tech and became Director of the Center). Professor Tullock is author of twenty-three books and several hundred articles in economics, public choice, law and economics, bio-economics and foreign affairs. He is best known for his publications of The Calculus of Consent (with James M. Buchanan), The Logic of the Law, The Politics of Bureaucracy, The Social Dilemma, Autocracy, The Economics of Non-Human Societies, Rent Seeking and On Voting. Professor Tullock's 1967 article entitled: "The Welfare Cost of Tariffs, Monopolies and Theft" is a widely cited classic that has generated a major ongoing research program in the political economy of rent seeking.

Professor Tullock has served as president of the Public Choice Society, Southern and Western Economic Associations, APEE, Bioeconomics Society, and Atlantic Economic Society. He was honored as Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 1998.